changing workforce helped fuel the
surge in programs to promote work-life balance—an agenda fueled in
part, although not exclusively, by the
rising numbers of women in the labor
force. “I still remember when we were
asked if we should have on-site day
care,” recalls Torsone, who says such
amenities are now commonplace as
HR leaders grapple with other balance-related issues, such as needing time
and flexibility to care for aging parents.

“We’ve trained our managers to besmart about dealing with these changes.”Several of the interviewees citeda growing emphasis on developingtop talent, especially for the C-suite.The latter years of the 20th centuryalso brought the rise of the so-called“celebrity CEO” like General Electric’sJack Welch, tied to a growing sensethat strong executives were criticalto driving higher profits and, in turn,higher stock prices. For CHROs, thisnew emphasis on leadership meant afocus on talent development that alsotended to bring HR executives closer tothe center of power.

Kimmet notes that after businessprofits had flat-lined in the’70s, the Wall Street boomof the ’80s and ’90scaused shareholdersand CEOs to lookmore closely atways that HRprograms couldhelp pushprofit marginshigher. In thesemore dynamicmoderncorporations,she says “peoplemanagement had ahuge critical abilityto control the growthof spending and driveMark Berry, vice president forhuman resources at Covington, La.-based CGB Enterprises, a grain andtransportation firm, says the biggestboost for the HR profession has beenthe ability to use data to show thespecific effects of various policiesor programs on the bottom line. Herecalled a moment at a prior employer,Conagra Brands, when he ran intothe firm’s CEO at a neighborhoodsupermarket and mentioned that theinitiative he was working on couldboost earnings by 7 cents a share.“Suddenly,” he recalls with a laugh, “Ihave the interest of the CEO.”Yet Berry noted that even today,some major companies are in the earlystages of figuring out how to best usepeople-management strategies to drivebusiness results. “The most importantdevelopment to me is the move tomore evidence-based HR policies andprograms,” he says. Since arriving atCGB a couple of years ago, Berry hasincreased the frequency of employeesurveys but targeted them to solveproblems such as a high turnover rate.

Those efforts, he says, showedthat people were leavingbecause they perceiveda lack of developmentopportunities, anissue the firmaddressed withbetter trainingand by targetingthe jobs mostprone toturnover.“I thinkCEOs andboards ofdirectors havebecome morecognizant of … the impact of talentand human capital, and there’s arecognition that the HR function has alot to do with that,” says Murabito. “Ina service-based economy, people andtalent engagement has become morecritical to business success than theother costs of goods.”Murabito also notes that as HRhas become more strategic andless of an administrative function, ascience of people management hasemerged. He says he’s noticed astronger fellowship of CHROs whotalk with each other about the latesttrends, often through conventions andother activities sponsored by groupssuch as the National Academy ofHuman Resources or the HR PolicyAssociation. “These associations havehelped collectively shape how we,as HR executives, contribute to the

Looking to the Future

As these HR executives look
toward the future, their views of what
will happen in the field over the next
30 years are very much shaped by
what they see in today’s workforce.
Right now, the American labor pool is
marked by generational change—as
the so-called millennials under the
age of 35 become the largest bloc in
the workplace—and experts say this
transition is powering new attitudes
about the nature of work. The most
experienced HR professionals say
that when they started out, older
workers who’d been raised in the
Great Depression and World War II
worried more about pay and economic
concerns, while today’s younger
employees are more focused on their
workplace experiences and on making
a difference in society.

“The conversation about greatersocial awareness—about planetaryresources and the environment,about social injustice andinequality, about treatingpeople with respect andpay equity—is a growingdrumbeat,” Kimmetsays. What’s more, HRexecutives are still workingthrough ever-changingideas about work-lifebalance. The emphasis on flex time ortelecommuting from home has to somedegree given way to an emphasis on aworkplace that’s focused on a shared andfulfilling employee experience.

HR leaders say that many of the
changes already afoot—such as moving
away from annual employee ratings to
emphasize more personal coaching—
share a desire to better meet the more
individualized needs of the modern
employee, with the goal of retaining
workers and making them more
productive.

“The biggest issue over the next
30 years will be how to make a better
human connection,” says Robinson,
who spoke of the need to customize
training programs and collect feedback
from supervisors in order to meet the
goals of the individual worker.

The irony is that a major long-term
worry for many HR executives involves
the accelerating pace of automation
and the increasing capabilities of
artificial intelligence to perform
work now being done by humans.
For Torsone, the challenge of AI is
similar to what Pitney Bowes faced
when it downsized its Connecticut
manufacturing, but with possibly larger
ramifications. “We’re going to have
to think about deconstructing work,
and how people will be integrated with
artificial intelligence,” she says.

Although it’s almost impossible to
predict exactly how technology will
alter the workplace over the next 30
years, the HR executives interviewed
for this article mostly agree that the
skill the CHROs of the future will need
most is business acumen.

“Business acumen sets the table,”
says Berry, making the case that the
CHRO of the present, not to mention
the future, “really needs to be a
business leader,” with training and
possibly experience in all facets of the
company, such as sales and finance.
That much seems clear: While it’s
hard to imagine which gadgets and
robots will revolutionize the workplace
by 2047, the experts agree that the
concept of the modern HR executive as
a key business partner is here for good.

Send questions or comments about
this story to hreletters@lrp.com.

Michael D’Ambrose

to control the growthof spending and drivethat people were leavingbecause they perceiveda lack of developmentopportunities, anissue the firmdirectors havebecome morecaused shareholdersresources and the environment,ipe